To examine the social and economic impacts of the next Grand Solar Minimum – See About

According to solar experts, the “general consensus is that we’ve passed the peak” of the current ~11-year solar cycle. If solar geomagnetic activity has also peaked for the current solar cycle, the Ap index of geomagnetic activity declined about 66% so far at solar maxima over the past three solar cycles. The Ap index is one of many indicators of solar activity including total solar irradiance, sunspots, radio flux, and several others, and has particular relevance to the Svensmark cosmic ray theory of climate.

Solar geomagnetic activity shields galactic cosmic rays from Earth, which according to Svensmark’s theory, nucleate cloud formation. It will be interesting over the next several years to see if this decline in solar geomagnetic activity is found to increase cloud formation and potentially surface cooling.